by Mary Balogh
At last he handed Abby into the carriage, about the roof of which a garland of flowers had appeared since he came to church in it earlier, though as far as he could see from a single glance there were no old boots or old hardware attached to the back of it to create an unholy din when the conveyance moved. It was no wonder, though, that the villagers had known there was a wedding in progress inside the church.
Harry, rather than join them inside, climbed to the box to sit beside the coachman. It was something he would have been incapable of doing without some help a mere few weeks ago.
The door was shut upon them, Abby waved to the villagers still gathered outside, and the carriage rocked into motion just as the church bells pealed. And yes, there was something underneath after all that rattled and grated and scraped and otherwise announced to the world that a bride and groom rode within.
He turned his head to look at his wife. She was gazing back and reaching for his hand. He closed his own about hers and remembered not to grip too tightly.
“Well, Mrs. Bennington,” he said.
“Ah. I like it,” she told him. “I am glad you are not a Jones or a Brown or a Smith.”
“You would not have married me if I had been any one of those?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I have been waiting, you see, not for a good man, but for a good name.”
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling, and . . .
“You have a petal on the side of your nose,” he told her.
She brushed at the wrong side and he removed the petal himself with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand.
“But did it come from Harry’s hoard,” he said, examining it, “or from the garden upon your head?”
“I almost canceled the wedding,” she told him. “Our cook caught me sneaking out of the house this morning to gather a few small blooms with which to decorate my straw bonnet. She shooed me back upstairs to eat breakfast and hide from you while she did the job herself in Mrs. Sullivan’s room. This is the result.”
“She ironed my coat so ferociously last night when I went to do it myself,” he told her, “that it could almost stand alone. And when I got up early this morning to polish my boots, I discovered that I could almost see my face in them. If any Frenchmen had seen them like that in battle, they would have stopped their charge to hold their sides while they doubled up in laughter. The wars might have been over far sooner than they were.”
She lifted her free hand to tap the button closest to his heart. “And someone polished your buttons and all the other metalwork too?” she said.
“It was certainly not my handiwork,” he assured her.
“She is a tyrant,” she said. “She is also a very good cook.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
She was looking into his face, her finger still lightly circling his button. “Do you ever smile, Gil?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, frowning.
“But not today?”
“It is a solemn occasion,” he said. “Today we were wed.”
“Yes,” she said, and she smiled at him.
He dipped his head and kissed her.
Smiles did not come naturally to him. He must learn how to let out the ones that were sometimes there deep inside him. When he first saw her in church this morning, for example. When the vicar pronounced them man and wife. When they stepped out of church to cheers and applause and a shower of flower petals. Now, this moment.
“Tonight,” he said as he raised his head, but the carriage was drawing to a halt outside the house, and it remained an unexplained promise.
Tonight.
* * *
• • •
Abigail might have been alerted to what was to come by the fact that the butler opened both front doors of the house with a stately flourish even before the carriage had come to a complete halt and stood to one side of the doorway, clad in a different uniform from the one he had been wearing when she left the house with Harry. This was a smarter, newer uniform, presumably one he reserved for special occasions.
But she was not alerted. She was too caught up in the euphoria of a wedding that had been far more . . . oh, splendid than she had expected it to be. And that one word Gil had spoken before the carriage halted was ringing in her head.
Tonight.
The coachman opened the door of the carriage and put down the steps. Gil descended to the terrace and turned to hand her out. She smiled at Harry, who was standing at attention and had just saluted Gil again. Sometimes she forgot they were both military men, officers, Gil holding the superior rank. He kept hold of her hand as they went up the steps and past the butler into the hall—where they were met by two lines of servants, one on either side of the doorway, all smartly uniformed, all solemn and silently at attention. Even the grooms and gardeners were among them, as well as the steward and the foreman from the home farm and Harry’s valet.
They were silent until the butler stepped inside and nodded a signal that had them all suddenly smiling and applauding.
It was an extraordinary and touching moment in what even last night she had expected to be a very quiet, ordinary day in which she and Gil would slip down to the church to be married.
The butler gave a brief, stilted speech and Mrs. Sullivan an even shorter one. Then the steward called for three cheers, which were delivered self-consciously before everyone dissolved into laughter and covered it with another round of applause.
“Thank you,” Gil said when there was quiet again. “I give you all my word of honor as an officer in the Ninety-fifth Foot Regiment that I will care for your Miss Abigail, now Mrs. Bennington, every day of my life.”
Abigail turned her head to look up at him in some astonishment and realized that he was addressing his own people. These were not aristocrats or even gentry folk. They were his own sort and he respected and honored them. He would even, on occasion, chop wood for them and hang curtains for them and mend roofs for them. Or with them. It was an insight into his character that she would not forget.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at each of the servants in turn. “You have all helped make this day very special.”
“It won’t be so special if my breakfast gets ruined,” the cook said, and the butler dismissed the servants even as she was rounding up her helpers and shooing them in the direction of the kitchen.
“I say,” Harry said, “that was a surprise. I did not think of suggesting it, but clearly I did not need to. It is a wonderful thing to be at home, Abby, is it not?”
“It is,” she agreed, turning to him. But it was not to be her home any longer, was it? Her home was to be wherever Gil took her. He had a house called Rose Cottage in Gloucestershire. For a moment she felt panic claw at her stomach. During the past hour her life had changed in every way possible and forever. But it was too late to panic. Hinsford had been her childhood home, and it had been a good place to grow up, thanks to her mother. She was going to have to make Rose Cottage a good place for her own children to grow up.
Foolishly, she was thinking for the first time of her own children as well as Gil’s daughter. Their children.
“Sherry in the drawing room?” Harry suggested. “The vicar and Mrs. Jenkins ought to be here soon.”
“I need to go and remove my bonnet and comb my hair,” Abigail said, and was glad when Gil did not offer to escort her upstairs. She needed to be alone—just for a few minutes to catch her breath. She took the stairs at a run and stood with her back against the door of her bedchamber, her eyes closed.
And she wondered what her mother was doing at this precise moment, and what Camille was doing, and Anna and Jessica. And Grandmama Westcott and Grandmama Kingsley and . . . Oh, and all of them. Going about their business and their pleasure, quite unaware that this was her wedding day, that she had just married Lieutenant Colo
nel Bennington.
She swallowed a lump in her throat and willed herself not to cry. It would not do to go back downstairs with red eyes and blotchy cheeks. For she was not unhappy. She was very far from being that. It was just that she . . .
Oh, she missed her family.
She drew a few steadying breaths and took a step into the room, her hands going to the ribbons of her bonnet just as there was a light tap on the door. She considered not opening it. She was not ready to meet the world yet.
“Abby?” It was Gil’s voice, and she opened the door.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind his back—and it struck her that he now had a perfect right to be in her room behind a closed door when she was unchaperoned. He was frowning. His eyes were searching her face.
“What is it?” he asked her. “Regrets?”
She shook her head and swallowed. The swallow sounded horribly audible. “No,” she said. “No regrets.”
“What, then?” he asked. “Your mother? And your sisters?”
“I cannot help thinking,” she said, “that they will be disappointed.”
His expression turned even more stony. “That you married in such haste?” he asked. “Without their being here?”
She nodded.
“And that you married me?” he asked more softly.
She shook her head and bit her lip for a moment. “I cannot predict how they will feel about that, Gil,” she said. “I do not know how any of my family will feel. Except Harry. But if they are disappointed in whom I have married, then that is something they must deal with—or not. I am not disappointed.”
“We will leave for London tomorrow,” he told her.
She nodded. They had not made plans beyond today, but it was the obvious next step, for more than one reason. And there was no point in delay. Indeed there was every point in not delaying.
“We will call first upon your mother,” he said, “and upon other members of your family if you wish. I will take you to meet my lawyer. And I will set in motion what needs to be done to effect my retirement from the military.”
“So much to do,” she said. It seemed almost overwhelming.
“There is nothing to do today,” he told her, “except enjoy what is apparently being billed as a wedding breakfast. And then the rest of our wedding day. And our wedding night. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”
She nodded.
“We had better get that bonnet off your head before it wilts and get your hair combed without further delay,” he said. “I have a strong conviction that your cook would not take kindly to our being late for our wedding feast.”
We?
“I suppose it will wilt,” she said. “But—”
“But the bonnet still looks very splendid,” he said. And before she could remove it herself, he reached out to undo the ribbons beneath her chin and lift the hat carefully from her head before striding over to the table beside her bed and setting it down.
“Ah,” she said, “it has not wilted yet.”
She glanced into a mirror, saw that her hairstyle was too squashed to be revived with a mere bit of finger work, and removed the pins from the knot at the back of her neck. She went through to her dressing room as she did so, embarrassed at his seeing her hair cascade untidily about her shoulders. But even as she seated herself on the bench before her dressing table, he followed her in and leaned past her to pick up her brush. And he proceeded to remove all the snarls and knots from her hair without once causing her to wince.
“May I hire you as my personal maid?” she asked as she twisted her hair into a knot again.
“How much do you pay?” he asked her. “I do not come cheap.”
Ah. Humor. There had been some of it in the carriage too. How lovely. She smiled at his image in the mirror and got to her feet.
He offered his arm and led her downstairs to the drawing room, where the vicar and his wife were sitting with Harry. And over the following two hours they drank sherry, moved into the dining room, which rivaled the church for its floral splendor, and partook of a lavish feast, followed by toasts from both Harry and the vicar, and speeches from Harry and Gil. They ended the breakfast with wedding cake, which had somehow been elaborately iced and decorated despite such short notice, and champagne, which had been produced from somewhere in the bowels of the cellar.
Later, after the Reverend and Mrs. Jenkins had taken their leave, they took Beauty for a walk—or rather she took them, running ahead or in a wide circle about them before stopping in front of them, front legs flat on the ground, wide rump elevated, tail wagging, as though inviting them to a race, and then dashing off again.
After they had returned to the house Abigail wrote letters to Camille and Winifred and her grandmother Kingsley in Bath, and Gil surprised her by writing to Robbie with stories about what Beauty had been up to since the boy went home. He even, Abigail saw with delight, drew a few pen sketches of the dog, one of her looking exactly as she had looked when she stopped in front of them earlier, complete with wavy lines on either side of her tail to suggest movement.
Harry, after an hour’s rest in his room, took his horse and rode to the home of one of his boyhood friends. He sent back a note a mere hour later to inform them that he had been invited to stay the night. He would be home first thing in the morning, however, he had added, since he knew they intended to make an early start for London.
“Your brother has tact,” Gil said.
Abigail felt herself blushing.
Tonight . . .
Fifteen
The drawing room seemed unnaturally large with just the two of them in it, sitting on either side of the fireplace when they might surely have sat side by side on one of the sofas. His fault, Gil freely admitted. There was no fire burning, as it had been a warm day and had not cooled off significantly during the evening. Beauty was stretched out before the hearth anyway, snoring softly.
Abby was not embroidering or knitting or busy with any of her other customary needlework activities. Instead, she clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Yet she did not look relaxed. His fault again, surely. She had made a few attempts to begin conversation, all of which he had thwarted by answering briefly. He had never quite mastered the art of conversation at which polite society was so adept. It was his turn to choose a topic, one he must keep going this time. But she spoke again before he could think of something.
“I am rather wealthy,” she said abruptly. “I thought you ought to know.”
“Wealthy?” He raised his eyebrows. He had assumed she had nothing after being dispossessed several years ago.
“When it was discovered that Anna was our father’s only legitimate child,” she explained, “and that according to his will everything except the title and entailed property went to her, she was not at all happy about it. She wanted to share everything with the three of us in equal parts. To our shame, we spurned her offer. We were not even willing to recognize her as our sister. I do not know quite why. Perhaps it was because she was so happy to discover that after all she had family, most notably us, half siblings. We, on the other hand, hated her. Or perhaps we felt we were being condescended to by a nobody of an orphan from an orphanage. I hope it was not that. It would be horribly—and inappropriately—snobbish. But it may well have been.”
“It would have been perfectly understandable,” he said, though he felt a certain indignation on behalf of the woman who had always thought herself a penniless orphan. But that penniless orphan was now the Duchess of Netherby. Cinderella, he had called her, a comparison she had rejected. “It all happened very suddenly, did it not, and came as an utter shock to your whole family?”
“If it was the reason,” she said, “it has not been the reason for a long time. We are better than that, I believe. We have tried to love her, and we have largely succeeded. Indeed, it would be hard not to love Anna. She has been un
relentingly kind and affectionate toward us. When she learned a few weeks ago that I was planning to remain here instead of returning to London, she took me aside and begged me to accept my share, which she had set aside for me from the start and willed to me. Apparently Camille accepted her share several years ago, before she married Joel, though I did not know that until Anna told me. I accepted. My father was an extremely wealthy man. My quarter of everything he left to Anna is a fortune in its own right. I thought you ought to know.”
“So that I can live on your money?” he said.
Her cheeks flushed and her hands clenched in her lap. “You told me you had your own,” she said. “But I do not know how much. I do not imagine it can be a great deal. I just wanted you to know that . . . there is no reason in the world, Gil, why we cannot live on my fortune.”
“Except for my male pride,” he said.
“You do not need—” she began, but he held up a hand.
“When I fought in India, as a private soldier, as a corporal, and then as a sergeant,” he told her, “there were sometimes rich prizes to be won in the form of gold and precious jewels. It was neither strictly lawful nor particularly ethical, I suppose, but it happened. Not to everyone. Not even to very many. One had to be in the right place at the right time. But it happened to me and I managed to keep possession of what I had won until I came home as a newly commissioned officer. I bought my house with some of the proceeds. I invested the rest with an agent in London who was recommended to me. He has proved to be an honest and knowledgeable man. As well as managing my fortune, he manages the staffing and financing of my home and the farm that came with it.”
“Fortune?” she said, frowning.
“To me it is a fortune,” he said. “I can live comfortably if not lavishly on the income from it for the rest of my life. You have not married a fabulously wealthy man, Abby, but you have not married a poor man either. And I did give an accounting of my worth to Harry when he interrogated me before I went to London. He was satisfied. I do not need or even want your fortune. You may spend it on yourself and our children.”
